Is it possible to watch application insights locally

Question

There is a web.api application with Application Insights plugged in. The AI works like a charm when it is published to Azure. Unfortunately sometimes it is necessary to launch the app in iis express for test purposes. Normally I do it from cmd like this: "c:\program files\iis express\iisexpress" /port:1337 /path:c:\tracker_pub.
Is it possible to watch AI statistics in such a case? In particular I would like to see exceptions that happen sometimes.

Answer 1

You can use LinqPad to get all internal telemetry live. Also if you have VS 2015 Update 1 there is an Application Insights hub where you can find AI telemetry (same as in the VS output).

Answer 2

Yes, as long as your application is receiving requests and your local machine has internet connection, so it can send events to AI data collection endpoint it should be recording activity when running in iis express. The recommended approach is to send this data to a different instrumentation key (after creating a new AI resource in AI portal), so that your local test traffic is not mixed up with your production data, this is also a great way to test new custom events you are about to add. If you are not seeing any data when running in iis express, the best way to debug would be to start your application in Visual Studio with F5, you will see every event that is about to be sent in your debug output window.